sakon76 | Entries tagged with shopping

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Gave the most recent quilt to my mother today. She's experiencing some health issues. Squiddle really loved the quilt for his Nana - ranging from stealing the fabric while I was working on it, to "helping" with the basting, to snuggling lots with it once it was done. So hopefully his filling it with love will help.

On the way home from my parents' place, I needed to stop and get some thread to use in the orange sections of the crane quilt. And M&L Fabrics was much closer to my route than any JoAnns. I'd only been to M&L once, about twenty years ago, but I knew it was still around, and have heard well of it on quilting blogs.

HOLY HELL IT'S A FABRIC CANDY STORE.

I wish to note for the record that I was very good. I walked the aisles. I petted the fabric. I even seriously coveted a couple bolts. But ALL I got was the one spool of orange thread I came for. And I've been working on the quilting this evening. I have two of the seven orange sections quilted, and two of the eight black sections quilted. I need to have it quilted and bound by 6pm next Tuesday. And I have class Thursday night.

Six days. I can do this. I just have to push and keep working.

Dropped a whole bunch of cardboard boxes off at the recycling center, and went to a different mall to walk a lot more inside some air conditioning. The weather forecast says it's going to be about ten degrees cooler starting tomorrow; my response is best phrased as "pleasepleaseplease..." Walked until I felt nauseous and my feet hurt. Also discovered that I don't need to go to South Coast Plaza to feel poor; looking at the cost of a new pair of sunglasses will cause the same effect.

I've been back at work two days now, and so far so good. *knocks on wood*

While I was in the hospital, we had received in the mail a flier saying that the Joann's Fabrics branch which is right near my work (and on my driving route) is closing down. So I made a point of stopping in there today, to see what the sale was like.

I will note for the record that I was very good and got no fabric and no patterns.

I did, however, snag yarn and spools of silk thread as well as a ginormous cutting mat....

Alas, they were already out of all the sizes of crochet hooks I went in there hoping to find.

The other day I found mention of the Ikea Hackers website in, of all things, an Avengers fanfic. Being intrigued, I followed up and spent a couple evenings perusing the site, looking for anything that would fit what Wonderful Husband and I need. Specifically, we have a wasted corner in our living room, tucked away between the media center and the fireplace we have yet to use. (Hmm. Should see about getting that cleaned soon, and maybe use it this winter....) We've sporadically discussed putting shelves to hold our DVD collection in that corner, thus enabling us to get rid of the particleboard media storage units we inherited through family.

I found mention of the Varde wall shelf and researched a bit farther. I didn't even know that Ikea sold non-particleboard items! It's solid birch.

So we took measurements, figured out we want three of the things, picked up my mother, and went to Ikea today. It's a good thing we didn't dally on this as we often do on things, because apparently the shelves are being phased out. OTOH, we were gleefully delighted to discover at the checkout that each unit was now reduced to $30 instead of $50!

To report thus far: they are sturdy, go quickly and easily together, and look decent. They do not, however, come with the hardware (8 screws each) to actually attach them to the wall. So tomorrow we'll likely hit up Lowes, get screws that are long enough, and toggles, and hang the things. Then start transferring the DVDs and possibly have me stop at Ikea again for one more set of shelves, as once we get rid of the current storage units, we will have nothing to put the living room phone on....

All this is part of my recent push to keep cleaning/renovating the house. We divvied holidays up with my mother while we were shopping, and she's going to host Thanksgiving this year, while we get Christmas since we'll be in the country for it again. It's always fun going to Ikea with Mom, as she is half Swedish, speaks the language, lived there for a while IIRC, and can be asked if the item names actually mean anything. (Answer: most of them don't.) Also, Ikea's Swedish meatballs, while tasty enough, do not hold a candle to hers.

(No, the subject line does not refer to my estate sale shopping hobby. For once.)

I have not gone shopping for certain wardrobe staples in years. Those things without which we are vaguely less comfortable in so many ways. Physical, psychological, you name it. Yes, friends, I am talking about panties and socks.

The problem is that Mervyn's doesn't exist anymore. And Mervyn's was, IMO, by far the best of the middle-class department stores. (Orange County is lousy with Macy's and Bloomingdale's and Neiman Marcus; myself, I prefer paying the mortgage each month). Kohl's has, of course, swooped in to fill the retail gap left by Mervyn's, but, honestly, I don't like the quality of what they sell. I have not purchased a single garment there that has not had the hem come loose within five wearings. Not best impressed.

But then Already Pretty linked to this post and my jaw just about dropped at how gorgeous that dress is and how well it suits a
a curvy figure. I noted that it was from JC Penny's. My sister had given me a gift card to Penny's, possibly for my last birthday, or possibly the one before that. Either way, enabling!

So off I went, and discovered that Penny's has a decent selection of clothing for the curvaceous. Also, panties and socks! Though the panties (plain, cotton, multi-pack) cost about $7 each. Four pair of black socks cost as much as a single pair of undies! Highway robbery?

The store I went to didn't have the exact dress from the blog post (alas), but for all I know it's from last year. The store did have some cute things, though, and I tried on a few. Going on William Morris' maxim "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful," I ended up getting a maxi dress with a short jacket top that renders it suitable for office wear. I think it and I work well in combination.

And now I have new undies.

Wonderful Husband is spending most of this weekend at a programming conference a couple miles away from our home, so I was pretty much on my own today. So after getting up, doing breakfast, dishes, and laundry, I wended my way to a couple of local estate sales that had caught my eye in this week's PennySaver. The first, I found nothing. The second was not in a home but in a business park area, so I wasn't too sure about it, but... it turns out the lady whose stuff this was was a dishes seller. As in, thousands of dishes and replacements.com had already gotten first crack at going through her stuff. Not only did I find half a dozen pieces of the old Franciscan applepot pattern for my mother's set, I also found forty-nine pieces of the white Winfield bamboo dishes that are my everyday set. Marked down to $35 for the lot! Most of them I have in spades, but I couldn't get the bowls (which were the pieces I wanted most) for that amount on eBay! So, glee!

I then picked up my mother and we went to a consignment gallery/thrift shop that I've been passing on my way to work every day. There was some nifty stuff there, but I only got two pieces of pink depression glass. After that stop, we went to our real goal for the day, a vintage shop in Newport Beach. They had some nice stuff and I actually found a 1950s house dress that fit me, though I passed on it. But what I didn't pass on was a bracelet that's pewter and mother of pearl and blue gems and enamel work... it's gorgeous and fits me like a glove and I love it.

I go clothes shopping about twice a year, and very much tend toward things that're on sale or clearance. My favorite store is and always has been Mervyn's, so I'm fairly upset (for me, anyway) about it going out of business. I can't stand Kohl's, so I guess I'm going to have to start shopping at Sears or JCPenny's instead and hope they have stuff I might wear. (The sad sad thing about life is that even though I live close to high-end stores, I don't like what they carry, finding it generally ugly and overpriced.) I still miss the bighugeginormous thrift store that I used to shop at; all the Goodwills and Salvation Armies around here are tiny and don't sort things by size which makes them too much effort for me.

So, tonight I went clothes shopping. Four jeans, three tops, two bras, a pair of slacks, a sweater, two packets of undies and a marcasite pendant and earring set later, I'm done for the next six months. Now I can toss out my old jeans, some undies, and a pair of slacks which were all getting rather holey.

Now I just have to go get my annual haircut. The one I haven't gotten in about three years. *sigh* Goodbye, waist-length hair.

I'm going to miss Mervyn's.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Location: home

As if it wasn't bad enough getting a catalog from Williams Sonoma (*mimblewimble* really nice cooking gear), I just got a catalog from The Noble Collection. I thought I'd fallen off their mailing list and was glad because, y'know, lead me not into temptation for I can find the way myself and all that.... Now my brain is poking at me and wanting to be one of those annoying people who finishes all their Christmas shopping in November, saying "oh, that'd be a great gift for that person, and this, this would be perfect for this other person...." And even more annoyingly it's looking at some of the items and making me whimper, remembering that I wanted them for myself. Unfortunately, said items are pricy enough that I flat-out refuse to put them on my Christmas list.

Thus far I am winning the argument with the brain. But by a very narrow margin.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: home, sewing room

So, while I am waiting for the fraycheck on the ribbons to dry and waiting somewhat longer for the E6000 on the boning tips to dry....

After having realized that we were both going to have to schlep our sewing machines up to Costume College for the ladies' dancing slippers class, Liz recommended to me that I purchase a sewing machine trolley like hers. Okay, I thought, having little objection to the idea of an easy way to move my sewing machine about. And started checking out my local JoAnns for them. Only to discover of the four stores that I hit, only *one* had any left. They had *one* left, in fact. So I clutched my sale flier to me, hoping that no one would purchase it before Friday 5:15pm, when I could walk in and use my 50% coupon. Thursday afternoon the fliers arrive in the mail with the Monday-Thursday coupons, of course, but I'm sewing by then and don't want to backtrack to the store near where I work. I decide to risk it. So I go in after work yesterday and huzzah, it's still there! I check it to make sure it's all intact, that the handle telescopes, all the zippers work, whatnot, and discover that one of the little black pouches inside is gone. I ask the sales clerk at the checkout if maybe it's been floating around the store anywhere and they just didn't know what it went with? She calls her manager over, he gives me a 25% off discount for the missing little pouch, on top of the 50% off coupon I was using anyway. I got a $60 sewing machine trolley for $15. I am well pleased. ^_^ And I even like the color.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: home, sewing room

The other evening, having coupons that added up to 25% off, Wonderful Husband and I raided Mervyn's. Well, technically we raided two Mervyn's since the first one didn't have anything to tempt me but a new pair of Reeboks (the old ones, currently on my feet, are in their last gasps of existence). But we both walked away with new clothing for the holidays and work in general. Almost all of mine were from the 60% off racks (the two exceptions being sweaters which had been mistakenly hung on the sales rack and which had the effect of actually making me feel attractive when I tried them on; thus, they got to come home with me). Nonetheless, I spent over $200 on clothing. My cheapskate hindbrain is wincing and whimpering and realizing that's better than a month's worth of pin money and I still have Christmas presents to buy.

But in any case, today I am actually wearing brand-new clothing, a pseudo-military denim jacket with lace on it and a new pair of trousers which were what the shopping expedition was theoretically all about anyway. And I am still freezing at work, which I really don't understand why. I am fully clothed, wearing long sleeves and denim. The building is not actually cold (except for the cremains room which is just icy since it's on the north side of the building and is always shut up except for when I'm in there shuffling ashes into urns and no it's not psychological because I find that room lovely and cool in the summer).

I? Am apparently a natural ice cube. But a better-dressed one.